Chapter Seventy-Eight. A Dreadful First.
Seventy-Eight
A Dreadful First.
After I’m thrown back into the cell, the bars are closed on me and locked this time, and then I’m left alone.
I spend the first couple of moments standing with one foot in the fetid puddle I landed in twice, tears streaming down my face, my arms wrapped around myself. And then I realize that the soldier will come for me. This is how … it happens.
And if the last thing I do on this continent is kill that man? I am all right with that. If I’m dying tomorrow morning anyway, I might as well make sure that he doesn’t hurt anybody else.
I back up against the stone wall and wait.
And wait.
And … wait.
Wherever I am in the underground stone maze, there is no sound that travels to me other than those that are immediately about: There are drips from leaks in the mortar of the walls and ceiling, squeaks of the occasional rat, and the hiss and spit of the torches mounted around. And then there’s my ragged breath.
But no voices from somewhere else, not a footfall or hinge of doors.
Then again, this is where they torture people. They don’t want sound to travel.
My nervous eyes skate over those gruesome tables and the stained racks, those buckets, and the drains. I rub my face, and start to pace.
That lasts … for a while? I don’t know how long.
When my legs begin to ache and my sore feet protest my weight, I settle down on the floor, and think of the position Merc was in as I finally saw him. Mirroring exactly the orientation of his limbs, I arrange myself as he was because it seems like the only way I’m able to be with him.
More time passes. I know this because it always does, and in my solitude, as the cold and damp seep into my bones even with my makeshift cloak, I think of how many days and nights have gone by without my noticing over the course of my life …
how many times I awoke under the stairs, and scurried to work in the Gauntlet’s little kitchen, and went to Mare’s, and raced back, and cleared tables and cleaned up messes—only to go to bed and get up and do it all over again.
So many days and nights.
Countless, really.
And now here I am, with no outdoor lighting for reference, floating in an unknown sea of hours that may be going fast or slow, I have no idea …
waiting for a man to come back so I can kill him.
Having no watch or clock or rhythm of repetitive actions to ground me is a mental challenge.
It’s as disorienting as walking through a dark room, this time blindness, and the longer it persists, the more drowsy I become.
Even though I want to stay alert, I can’t seem to keep my heavy eyelids open and once they close, I …
“Leave us.”
At the sound of the male voice, I jerk my head up. I’m lying on my side on the stone floor, my arm as my pillow, my legs tucked up close to my body.
It’s the soldier, finally. And he’s closing the two of us into the cell together as he keeps his eyes on a pair of guards who retreat at his command. After they disappear through the door across the way, he goes immediately for the front of his britches.
He smiles coldly. “I do not know what you have done to increase the ire with which you are held, but I commend you for your efforts on our behalf. I have been assured that we will not be interrupted. For however long I wish.”
My lungs strain for air, and I struggle to my feet as the soldier comes at me—and then he’s upon me, one of his hands gripping my throat and squeezing, the other shoving under the felt cloak to commence the groping.
I mean to be strong. I intend to fight. I tell myself to scream and kick and punch, and fulfill what I’ve been shown—
Instead, I freeze.
As his rough, greedy fingers start to tear at my clothes, my skin tightens all over my body in revulsion and my stomach thrashes in the cradle of my pelvis.
I smell his breath and his sweat, feel the wool of his sleeve streak across my stomach and under my breasts—and then the jodhpurs are gone and he forces himself between my thighs.
He stops. Pulls back and frowns at me. “I expected more resistance from you. You were far more promising before.”
The soldier yanks my arm up over my head and pins it to the wall. “Nothing to say? Are you not going to beg me to stop, whore?”
The word snaps me out of the numb place I retreated to. All at once, I’m threaded with heat: The surge starts in my extremities and zeroes in on the center of my chest as a sudden rage floods me—and I embrace this other side coming out.
From a vast distance, I hear my own voice, steady and calm.
“You want a fight,” I say.
His horrible laugh is like his hands on my skin, something that I cannot abide. And will not.
The fury in me redoubles, and then explodes until I am shaking, not from fear, but from a pent-up energy that feels totally different than anything I have ever experienced—
“I told you before.” His lips go to my neck. “I will hear you beg.”
The soldier bites my collarbone, and as I let out a shout of pain, he laughs again. “Ah, more like it. Let’s try that once more—and if you make this good for me, I’ll ensure your death tomorrow morning is quick—”
The gasp he makes goes right into my ear, and echoes in my skull.
As he straightens, he looks down at me in shock. “What … have you done.”
I pull my free arm back—and punch him again. And then I’m looking him in the eyes as I am punching, punching, punching him in the gut, over and over—with such strength that I’m pushing him back against the grimy stone wall.
“You want to fight,” I growl as I plunge the crystal knife into him again. “You want to hurt me as I beg for mercy?”
I stab him another time, so deeply now that my whole fist is going into his abdomen—and now I’m twisting and forcing the weapon up higher. Blood speckles my face and throat, warm little flicks that surely stain my soul. I am unleashed though, and the act of killing feeds the vengeance within me—
Red sparks fall from the ceiling as the soldier collapses into the corner, still with a look of utter surprise on his face.
Whether it’s because of what glimmers and twinkles in the air or what’s been done to him, I don’t know.
I don’t care. As he coughs up blood, he knocks his hat off, exposing his balding hair and a mole at his temple that’s the size of a coin.
Stepping over his hips, I stare down at him as blood drips off my fist and dapples the open fly of his britches.
I tell myself to leave him. The door to the cell is once more closed, but I see that he didn’t bother to lock things behind him. All I have to do is slip out, and navigate the passageways and tunnels back to where Merc is—
There’s no one around and no worry that sound will travel. I also have time because the soldier told the other guards to leave us alone and boasted he could take as long as he wanted.
As these thoughts occur to me, I don’t know why I’m wasting time with them—
The dark wave of energy that flows through me overtakes everything. Even as I am horrified, there’s nothing I can do to fight the urge that commands me.
Tilting forward, I take my foot and press it into his groin until all of my weight is on his crotch and he is writhing under me as he hoarsely starts to scream.
The moment his lips open, I bend down, draw my arm back—
And drive the crystal knife into his mouth.
The officer’s whole body spasms, his hands and legs flopping on the stone floor, his eyes rolling back as he coughs blood and chokes on it.
But I’m not done yet. I retract my fist, feeling his teeth on the back of my knuckles—and then I stab him one more time, in the seat of his manhood, in the flesh weapon he was going to enjoy hurting me with.
All he can do is moan and writhe, his blood-stained hands going for the front of those britches which he was so hurried to open. After which … he no longer moves.
In the trembling quiet that follows, I hear harsh breathing and I’m surprised he’s able to get anything down into his chest—and then realize it’s me. I’m dragging in hoarse breaths.
As I take back my crystal knife from his privacy, the last of the red sparkles fall from the ceiling of the cell and my fury starts to ebb.
Standing over the soldier, my mind begins to clear and I am … mortified by what I’ve done, especially as I look down at his gutted torso: I’m no better than those demons, ripping into a man’s stomach like that.
“He would have raped and killed me,” I say aloud. “It was survival.”
Maybe. Up until that last part—
The sound of a door opening spins me around. Out of instinct, I shove the crystal knife back into the pocket I took it out of under my makeshift cloak. Of course, the blood smudge I leave behind is a telltale that I have a weapon.
Like the messy corpse isn’t?
And then stupidly, I put my hands up, both the bloodied one and the one that is relatively clean, as if someone is pointing one of those sidearms at me.
It’s not guards. It is that advisor.
As she comes up to the cell, I keep my focus on her chin. It tilts down as she obviously looks at the soldier and then relevels as she regards me.
Well … I was going to be killed, anyway.
At least I took a bad man with me.